Drowning – Craig Rodgers

The pool doesn’t need cleaning. It doesn’t need anything. The pipes have ceased their flowing and the waters have all drained away. What remains is a concrete hole.

She sits along the laminated tongue of diving board outstretched over the void. The glass in her hand is held but only just. She leans across legs folded underneath her body and she gives in. Her body hitches, her face is more grimace than frown. Anguish. Her sobbing comes from someplace deep, primordial. A rending of soul.

There are signs of what is lost. A skimmer lies in the grass. A notebook is tucked beneath the deck chair where he lounged. His shirt still sits in a heap on the chair’s striped fabric. His shorts are still somewhere upstairs.

She drinks from her glass and for a moment she calms, but it is a fleeting respite from the horror of loss. From a bottle thick and brown she refills her glass and again empties it but that respite isn’t there, no solace does come. The poolboy is forever gone, and though she now drowns in a flood of tears the pool from now on will remain lifeless and dry.

Craig Rodgers is the author of Man in Leaf (published by literary journal Juked) and Wishes (appearing in Heart of Farkness) as well as over four thousand tweets. He has an extensive collection of literary rejections folded into the shape of cranes and spends most of his time writing in North Texas. Follow him @abasketofcraig